Funérailles de star

'Da wan' is a charming Chinese (and sort of American) comedy that centres around a cameraman Yoyo (Yu Ge) who's assigned to arrange a funeral for a famous American director, Tyler and the director's assistant, Lucy (Rosamund Kwan) helps Yoyo to complete the task. With excellent cinematography and lighting, and beautiful set designs, it is quite a visually likable. The humour isn't slapstick or like the toilet humour so often seen in American films. It's part of the satirical screenplay and mingles well with the plot.

Yu Ge is fantastic and he's hilarious without appearing 'obviously' funny. He brings out the character's honesty and naivety with conviction and is both identifiable and lovable to the viewers. Rosamund Kwan is charming and lovely. She and Yu Ge share a fine chemistry. And of course Donald Sutherland is great as usual. His scenes with both Ge and Kwan are endearing and funny.

Anyone interested in light comedy can pick this one but I'm not sure whether it'll appeal to all as the plot is a little different from the regular comedy...but I loved it.

"Big Shot's Funeral" doesn't quite add up. First, if you dislike subtitles, look elsewhere, because 80% of the film is in Mandarin. Unfortunately, with Donald Sutherland featured on the DVD jacket, you could easily be mislead into thinking this was not a foreign film. The idea of a "sponsored funeral" is a good one, but unfortunately is beaten to death for 100 minutes, which is way too long for a one joke movie. I can't say I didn't laugh, but it was a real chore to keep up with the rapidly changing subtitles. Definitely has very limited re-watch value, and because of the language barrier, loses something in the translation. - MERK

I don't know how anyone can fail to see - this satire is hip and wicked to the bone. Not at all a mainstream Chinese production you would expect!

The closest comparison for this baby would be to _Diva_, but for its viciously funny stab at dot-com money madness, there's no equal.

Within all the whirling satire, Donald Sutherland held down the movie's emotional anchor admirably. He made the movie more than just an average comedy. And the way director Feng used him showed me that China today can make films as sophisticated as any in the world. He made Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee look utterly out-of-date and irrelevent.

"Da Wan" is an absolutely brilliant satire. It portrays the onslaught of Western and capitalist culture in China, movie studios' obsession with the bottom-line as opposed to artistic merit, the fun and foibles of cross-cultural exchange, and the often rough intersections of business and identity. Car chases, explosions, and slick martial arts fight scenes are not to be found in this gem of a film.

I highly recommend it!

Dear movie fans,if you are not Chinese, please ask Chinese for the reason why they like to watch it.

In China, this movie is for the celebration of the New Year 2003, when a lot of people will go to the cinema, so it is a comedy for sure. And it satirizes a phenomenon that in China only bragging could take attention of people, and then make big money, so some people takes advantage of the funeral of the big shot to advertise. That's a movie for laugh and think when you leave the cinema, almost everyone in China talked about it at that time,

Thanks.